1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for protecting scalable video coding contents, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus capable of reducing the computational complexity of encryption and decryption by encrypting only data of scalable video coding contents for each coding layer in terms of temporal, spatial, and Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) scalabilities, to provide a service for protected scalable video coding contents, the method and apparatus also capable of protecting contents by generating and distributing an encryption key for encryption and decryption depending on a class of a contents consumer.
2. Discussion of Related Art
As is known, a conventional compressed video content protection scheme involves packetizing video contents and encrypting the resultant packets upon transmission to protect the contents, or encrypting stored, compressed video contents to protect them.
However, the protection scheme has a disadvantage of high computational complexity in decrypting encrypted compressed video contents. Also, the scheme encrypts all data of respective layers in scalable video coding contents, increasing inefficient computational complexity.